TFOF: 17 Aug - 30 Aug

The extra 'f' is for fortnight.  And with two weeks to march through, no time to waste!  (Click below to see the full post, since there's oodles in it)

Back on the 17th, the world was getting its collective head around the news that a human being had travelled 100m in 9.58 seconds just by running.  Tom Fordyce wrote an excellent post about Usain Bolt's run:

Crouched on the blocks in his yellow vest and long green shorts, the smile finally slid off his face. A bang, an explosion of long limbs and a handful of flashing footfalls later, it was back and bigger than ever. There was pandemonium. All anyone could look at were Bolt's dancing orange spikes and the bright yellow numbers on the scoreboards all round the track: 9.58. People swore. Some clutched their heads. Others looked at their neighbours with open mouths and gaped like goldfish.

The statistics made for more goldfish-gaping:

Bolt covered the course - from a standing start - at 23.35 miles per hour. However, he dashed from the 60m to the 80m mark in 1.61 seconds - 27.79 mph. [...] Britain's Bradley Wiggins was only travelling 7.03mph faster than Bolt when he won Olympic track cycling gold in the men's 4km individual pursuit in Beijing.

Inevitably, Hitler was upset.

Anyhoo, I was rather charmed by this animated papercraft video (not to mention the detail and time that must've gone into it):

Hurtling towards the ridiculous, follow this link to watch a veritable horde of ducks run after you while the Benny Hill chase music plays.  Gave me far too much joy, that did.  My appreciation for all things moosey was sated by this rather splendid and hopefully genuine photo.  And then back to animation for another music video, this one fan-made for Grizzly Bear's summer-soundtracking Two Weeks, produced by Gabe Askew with such professionalism you'd swear it was the official video.  Superb work.

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

There's still sodding months to go before Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo reaches cinema screens in the UK, but it's been good to follow how it's been received in America.  I particularly liked this article about a parent taking his autistic 3 year old to the cinema for the first time to see it:

So there we were, watching Ponyo, I in my seat sipping my soda, and Kayleigh in her stroller with her sippy cup. For more than 90 minutes, she stared wide-eyed at the screen, grinning and twirling her hair with a finger, occasionally shouting out "octopus!" or "squid!" as she recognized different sea creatures. When an infant appeared onscreen, she called out "Baby Sean!" (the name of her little brother) with mischievous delight. [...] In Ponyo, I found a character who probably was never intended to display signs of PDD-NOS. But there she was on the big screen, reflecting so much of what I see every day in Kayleigh. And Ponyo inspired hundreds of children and parents in the audience, myself included, by wholeheartedly embracing her potential, no matter how others chose to define her.

Then I stared at this link and my brain went FZZZZZZZZZZZ-pop.

Meantime, the Guardian had an extract from the forthcoming This Mitchell and Webb Book which reads exactly as you'd imagine it would:

I've always wanted to like coffee. I love its smell. But its taste is as disappointing by comparison as that of freshly cut grass. Also, it gives me a headache. For many years I tried to join in: I wanted to be a coffee drinker - it's deemed cool without being modern, which is the only sort of cool I'll ever be able to get away with. It's lightly but glamorously bad for you, which is the only sort of "bad for you" I have the courage for.

Which leads nicely into David Mitchell's last soapbox vodcast thingy, which does an ace job of puncturing all that political posturing about waste, not to mention a handy summary of everything else he's been railing at.  I tried embedding the video but the code went arseways, so you'll just have to click here, but it's worth it.  Hopefully there'll be more of these in the future.

Inevitably I got all googly over these pictures of a kitten being bottle fed.  AWWWWW.  This video, on the other hand, has to be one of the wonkiest, demented, downright mental things I've seen in some time. Naturally I love it.

Back in the real world, though it may be hard to believe your eyes, came this demonstration from July's TED.  Eric Giler from MIT explains, and then demonstrates, wireless electricity.  No batteries, no leads, just power sent straight through the air (it's the magnetic fields, baby).  The potential for this is staggering.

The Onion News Network video podcasts can be pretty hit-and-miss, but I really enjoyed this one:

Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic

I thought this story about a 'photograph' of a single molecule's chemical structure was fascinating, but even that couldn't compare to the high point of the fortnight, the sheer awesomeness of Om Nom Nom Kitty (even if it is more like Nyang Nyang Nyang):

Nyang - it's the new nom.